Dennison Grant | Page 8

The Forks, but not much since I came down here. Well,
there's maybe a thousand tons o' hay over in the South Y.D., an' you
boys better trail over there to-morrow an' pitch into it--that is, if you're
satisfied with the price I'm payin' you."
"The price is all right," said Transley, "and we'll hit the trail at sun-up.
There'll be no trouble--no confliction of interests, I mean?"
"Whose interests?" demanded the rancher, beligerently. "Ain't I the
father of the Y.D? Ain't the whole valley named for me? When it
comes to interests--"
"Of course," Transley agreed, "but I just wanted to know how things
stood in case we ran up against something. It's not like the old days,
when a rancher would rather lose twenty-five per cent. of his stock over
winter than bother putting up hay. Hay land is getting to be worth
money, and I just want to know where we stand."
"Quite proper," said Y.D., "quite proper. An' now the matter's under
discussion, I'll jus' show you my hand. There's a fellow named Landson
down the valley of the South Y.D. that's been flirtin' with that hay
meadow for years, but he ain't got no claim to it. I was first on the
ground an' I cut it whenever I feel like it an' I'm goin' to go on cuttin' it.
If anybody comes out raisin' trouble, you just shoo 'em off, an' go on
cuttin' that hay, spite o' hell an' high water. Y.D.'ll stand behind you."
"Thanks," said Transley. "That's what I wanted to know."

CHAPTER II
The rancher had ridden into the Canadian plains country from below
"the line" long before barbed wire had become a menace in cattle- land.
From Pincher Creek to Maple Creek, and far beyond, the plains lay
unbroken save by the deep canyons where, through the process of ages,
mountain streams had worn their beds down to gravel bottoms, and by
the occasional trail which wandered through the wilderness like some

thousand-mile lariat carelessly dropped from the hand of the Master
Plainsman. Here and there, where the cutbanks of the river Canyons
widened out into sloping valleys, affording possible access to the
deep-lying streams, some ranchman had established his headquarters,
and his red-roofed, whitewashed buildings flashed back the hot rays
which fell from an opalescent heaven. At some of the more important
fords trading posts had come into being, whither the ranchmen
journeyed twice a year for groceries, clothing, kerosene, and other
liquids handled as surreptitiously as the vigilance of the Mounted
Police might suggest. The virgin prairie, with her strange, subtle
facility for entangling the hearts of men, lay undefiled by the
mercenary plowshare; unprostituted by the commercialism of the days
that were to be.
Into such a country Y.D. had ridden from the South, trailing his little
bunch of scrub heifers, in search of grass and water and, it may be, of a
new environment. Up through the Milk River country; across the Belly
and the Old Man; up and down the valley of the Little Bow, and across
the plains as far as the Big Bow he rode in search of the essentials of a
ranch headquarters. The first of these is water, the second grass, the
third fuel, the fourth shelter. Grass there was everywhere; a fine, short,
hairy crop which has the peculiar quality of self-curing in the autumn
sunshine and so furnishing a natural, uncut hay for the herds in the
winter months. Water there was only where the mountain streams
plowed their canyons through the deep subsoil, or at little lakes of
surface drainage, or, at rare intervals, at points where pure springs
broke forth from the hillsides. Along the river banks dark, crumbling
seams exposed coal resources which solved all questions of fuel, and
fringes of cottonwood and poplar afforded rough but satisfactory
building material. As the rancher sat on his horse on a little knoll which
overlooked a landscape leading down on one side to a sheltering bluff
by the river, and on the other losing itself on the rim of the heavens, no
fairer prospect surely could have met his eye.
And yet he was not entirely satisfied. He was looking for no temporary
location, but for a spot where he might drive his claim- stakes deep.
That prairie, which stretched under the hot sunshine unbroken to the

rim of heaven; that brown grass glowing with an almost
phosphorescent light as it curled close to the mother sod;-- a careless
match, a cigar stub, a bit of gun-wadding, and in an afternoon a million
acres of pasture land would carry not enough foliage to feed a gopher.
Y.D. turned in his saddle. Along the far western sky hung the purple
draperies of the Rockies. For fifty miles eastward from